fish

Do you eat meat? If you do, it’s more than likely been farmed, and highly unlikely that it’s been exclusively hunted from the wild. Most meat eaters can tell you that how farmed meat is grown has all sorts of differences, from its taste to its environmental impact. That’s why we find it particularly peculiar that many seafood consumers still have a steadfast fear of farmed fish. Just as all farmed meats aren’t equal, the same can be said for farmed seafood. We’re here to soothe your qualms and give you a little food for thought.

First and foremost, at Afishionado we absolutely appreciate and encourage scrutinous food purchasing behaviours! Perhaps you only buy a certain type of farmed meat—maybe pasture raised beef or free-range chicken. Maybe you take the time to make sure your eggs are cage-free, and maybe only the freshest spring lamb will do for you! You might go to leaps and bounds to avoid eating beef sourced from a confirmed animal feedlot operation, and perhaps you’d scoff at the idea of eating chicken raised in battery cages. Yet it’s still farmed meat—it’s just that you’ve chosen a specific method of farming that you prefer for sustainability or quality reasons or both.

The initial aversion to farmed seafood is often well deserved. There are many unsustainable large volumes, low-value aquaculture methods that pump low quality farmed seafood into the marketplace while having a huge environmental impact. Yet farmed seafood is far from a catch-all term. There is a distinct difference in quality, texture, taste, depending on how a species was grown. And there is a huge difference in sustainability. There are many different ways to raise a fish, and the resulting products are vastly different.

Just as pasture-raised grass-fed beef might taste different and have a different texture than an animal that was fed an unnatural diet of corn, soy, and grains, an Atlantic Salmon grown in a recirculating closed containment aquaculture facility, fed a diet comprised of sustainably sourced wild marine protein and fish oils, will certainly taste different than an open-net pen-raised Atlantic Salmon that was fed cheap feed comprised of corn and chicken by-products. Responsibly grown seafood can taste absolutely delicious.

Despite all of this, some folks are just deadset on wild seafood. It’s wild or nothing. We agree that a wild Atlantic Salmon definitely tastes different than a farmed one. It’s also a given that the modern-day chicken doesn’t taste like wild partridge or guinea fowl. Domesticated mutton and lamb don’t taste like wild bighorn sheep. We still find farm raised meats to be delicious, or we wouldn’t eat them. And farmed seafood can be a culinary delight as well.

Wild seafood is incredible, and if responsibly fished, a sustainable source of nutrition that can sustain consumers and coastal communities for generations to come. But we can’t—and shouldn’t—all eat wild seafood exclusively. We can—and should—celebrate those pioneering individuals and enterprises that are taking a stand against large-scale aquaculture, who take the time to raise delicious seafood responsibly. Together, sustainable aquaculture and sustainable fishing can make our seafood supply chain resilient and diverse for now and generations to come. Our eating decisions directly impact the future of seafood.

We often receive questions about the best way to store seafood. Proper food handling is extremely important for guaranteeing quality and safety and is paramount for seafood because it’s often more perishable than other foods. Spoilage can happen quickly. Enzymes within seafood flesh kick start the decaying process, which is further helped by naturally occurring microorganisms. Knowing the best ways to safely store seafood can help to make it last longer, taste its best, and limit any risk of illness!

Ideally, fresh fish and shellfish should be kept between 1.5 to 2˚C. For fresh seafood, make sure you never go under 0˚C or over 4˚C! Check your fridge temperature. You might need to consider turning your fridge temperature down to maximize seafood freshness, but make sure it’s not too cold for other fresh products such as fruits and vegetables. The lucky folks among us will have a separate compartment with a colder setting, but regardless, the following information will let you know how long your catch will last and the best ways to store it:

Fresh and Frozen Fish

Most sources such as Health Canada recommend that you consume fresh fish within two days of purchase. However, this time varies depending on how fresh the fish really is. Fish could last for up to four or more days after purchase. When purchasing with from your local fishmonger, the best way to be sure is to just ask what they recommend! A good fishmonger will know when your fish was harvested and how long it’ll last under ideal conditions. Alternatively, when purchasing from grocery stores there is often a best before the date that should be followed.

If you can’t consume your fresh fish in time, freezing is a great option to prolong freshness. Your fish should be packaged so that there is little to no air left ꟷ vacuum packing works wonders ꟷ but if you don’t have one, squeezing as much air out as possible will do the trick. Another option is to fill a container with cold seawater or salted water and place the portions of fish in there to freeze. Take note that fish fattier fish like salmon and mackerel can’t be stored as long as those with little fat such as cod or hake. As a rule of thumb, fattier fish can remain in the freezer for up to 3 months, while low-fat fish can be stored for up to 6 months – in your home freezer. When fish has been stored in a commercial or industrial freezer, it is generally good up to 2 years from being packed!

Fresh and Frozen Shellfish

Fresh live shellfish should be stored in the refrigerator in a bowl with a damp cloth or paper towel over top. Any live product should never be stored while submerged in water or sealed in air-tight containers or bags because they’ll soon perish from lack of oxygen! Also, be sure to empty any water that accumulates at the bottom of the bowl ꟷ this is particularly common in mussels as they release a lot of water.

The freshness and quality of your shellfish will depend on how long it can be stored in the fridge. Health Canada suggests that all shellfish be consumed within three days, however, when bought fresh and local from fishmongers like us, we can recommend up to a week for mussels and clams, and up to three weeks for oysters! For fresh scallops and shrimp, we suggest no more than two days.

Whether you have leftovers or just want to save some of your shellfish for later, we recommend you cook your shellfish, or you can remove the meat and store in a freezer bag or container submerged in a brine solution or the cooled liquid that it was cooked in. For oysters specifically, it’s best to shuck the oysters and save the liquid to cover the oysters in. Below are some suggested freezer storing times:

Lobster – 3-4 months

Scallops – 6 months

Mussels – 3-4 months

Clams – 3-4 months

Oysters – 4-6 months

Shrimp – 4-6 months

As always, if you ever have any seafood related questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us through our website, or to come have a chat with us in person at the Warehouse at 2867 Isleville Street in Halifax’s North End on Thursdays and Fridays from 11 to 7, during the market day,ans Saturdays from 9-1.

When it comes to seafood in Nova Scotia, many of us think that a fish is a fish is a fish. But an increasing focus on export and commodity markets in Nova Scotia is stripping the identity and value away from our seafood. So how do we maximize the value of our small-scale, community-based fisheries and aquaculture operations?

Here in Nova Scotia, we have some of the best ocean access in the world. We have over 13 thousand kilometers of coastline where small-scale, community-based fishers use age-old and low-impact fishing methods. We have emerging world-class aquaculture producers, too, from land-based recirculating aquaculture systems to low-impact, community-based shellfish farms.

With over $1.6 billion in seafood exports, Nova Scotia is Canada’s number one seafood exporter. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to retain the value of our seafood in Nova Scotia when the majority of our premium fish are exported in a faceless, global commodity market. According to One Nova Scotia’s 2015 report, Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Nova Scotians, over 90 per cent of Nova Scotia’s seafood is exported to foreign markets, often with little domestic processing before it goes abroad.

Consider one of Nova Scotia’s seafood poster children: haddock. Haddock exports represent the most significant loss of value in any groundfish species in our province. Less than 6 per cent of the exported weight of haddock is as fillets. Instead, fish is shipped out whole to be processed somewhere else. By not processing it here in Nova Scotia, we lost over $7 million in direct export revenue in 2011 alone, and that doesn’t take into account the loss of associated economic activity from employment in the processing sector.

Small retailers can’t step in and change this because our provincial government maintains antiquated fish processing regulations that are a direct consequence of this commodity market export focus. New and innovative businesses like ours (Afishionado) can’t access some types of fish we want, let alone fillet it. There is a moratorium on groundfish processing licences, so we have to rely on the increasingly scarce supply of community-based processors who can cut haddock for us and who are also under duress.

Let’s be clear: exporting isn’t bad. We’ve relied on it for centuries and will continue to do so. The tricky thing is, however, when we focus exclusively on the bulk commodity market without telling the story of our seafood — and celebrating it — we lose value, we lose identity and we lose the opportunity for local access. The haddock you eat in fish and chip shops throughout the province was probably caught here but sent on a worldwide odyssey where it was cut abroad, most likely China, and frozen twice before returning to the province.

This message really hit home recently when, sadly, one of our shellfish suppliers drowned while on the water. There are inherent dangers to life on the sea. But if our producers are competing on a convoluted and faceless commodity market, then is it really worth it to brave the perils of the sea? Cheap prices devalue the reality of their livelihoods.

We need to process our own seafood so that we can tell its story and celebrate the communities where it came from. If we want to benefit from place-based marketing, then we need to be able to access that product here in Nova Scotia. Consumers abroad need to be able to distinguish our products in the convoluted global commodity market. We have a robust, independent inshore fleet that could be back out on the water fishing.

Nova Scotia has the story. We have coastal communities that would benefit from branding and storytelling. We can embrace and celebrate a culture that has sustained our province’s growth for centuries. If we don’t have the ability to distinguish a fish by how or where it was caught or grown, or on what scale it was caught or grown and by whom, then we’ll just be another producer of commodities stripping value from our beautiful seafood resource.